Three members of the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matar,’ also known in Spanish as Servidoras, community visited Minot on Wednesday. Their time in Minot was busy. It started with Mass at 8 a.m. in St. Leo’s Catholic Church. Following Mass there was an hour of prayer in the church and then a meet-and-greet time in the church dining room.

Mother Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Sister Servant of the Cross and Sister Star of the Evangelization were on a tight schedule. They visited the other Catholic churches in Minot and had lunch with students at Bishop Ryan Catholic School. In the afternoon, they returned to downtown Minot to tour the former St. Leo’s Elementary School, a site which may possibly be a home for some members of the Servants of the Lord community in the future. The evening found them at the Reaching Out for Christ’s Kingdom event at Bishop Ryan where Sister Star of the Evangelization, who grew up in Center, was the guest speaker.

Under the direction of the Most Rev. David Kagan, bishop of the Diocese of Bismarck, both the Rev. Justin Waltz, pastor of St. Leo’s and delegate of the Bishop for Catholic education, and the Rev. Joshua Waltz, the vocation director of the diocese of Bismarck, have been working fervently to bring an order of religious sisters back to serve in the Minot Christian community. “It’s been decades since religious sisters have served in Minot but they are a part of our Christian tradition as well as our community’s history,” Rev. Justin Waltz said. “It would be a beautiful blessing from Christ to have them serving among us once again.”

The Servidoras are missionary sisters dedicated to prolonging the Incarnation of the Word through the evangelization of culture. Currently there are a little more than a thousand members in the community, Sister Servant of the Cross said. Their community is based in Washington, D.C.

The community was founded in 1988 by the Rev. Carlos Miguel Buela, IVE. The members belong to the Religious Family of the Incarnate Word. The nuns take seriously the demands of the Gospel in going “to make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:18) as modern missionaries. They seek to fulfill a religious vocation and to be spouses of Christ by living deeply the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.

The nuns wear distinctive blue and gray habits as a sign of their total consecration to God and as a living symbol of the mystery of the Incarnation – blue representing the divinity of Christ, and gray the humanity of Christ. Their bright blue scapulars are also a way to honor the Virgin Mary, to whom they are consecrated in a fourth vow of Marian slavery of love according to St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort.

When women become Servants of the Lord they take new religious names which are all titles of Our Lady as a way to keep her present in their lives as a model for their religious life.

The decision of when, or if, some members of the Servidoras community will be making their home and serving the Lord in Minot has not been made. Their work in Minot would be varied and would include teaching and some hospital work. Their home would be on the third floor of the former St. Leo’s Elementary School, which will be renovated in the coming years.

The welcome they received Wednesday was noted by members of the community.

“The people are so welcoming,” said Mother Mary of the Immaculate Conception. “We feel right at home.”